Monday, December 31, 2012

In 'Raid on Entebbe' the soldiers, en-route to Entebbe, are studying the faces of the terrorists in a folder (the better to shoot them all dead, my dear):

Lt. Col. Yonatan 'Yoni' Netanyahu: What if he came through that door?

Capt. Sammy Berg: I'd shoot him.

Netanyahu: What if he was surrounded by fifty women and children?

Berg: (thoughtful pause) I wouldn't miss.

A great film, but like a lot of films made in ye olde days, the pacing is slower than we're used to with newer films. But once you get used to that, you're watching a great film, showing the terrorists, hostages, politicians, soldiers, all doing their thing. Plus Yaphet Kotto as Idi Amin.

I have no idea how faithful the movie is to the actual events. Wiki claims the soldiers destroyed the Ugandan fighter planes on the ground. Knowing that, I was expecting some guys to run around with C4, some hammers. The movie soldiers used a jeep-mounted recoilless rifle and there were lots of kabooms and explosions which delighted my inner-child.

Me, I'd use explosives and the hammers to wreck the fighters - planes are fragile. Save the recoilless ammunition to repel any soldiers that show up. You can always shoot it off as you're leaving. But .. explosions! The heck with historical accuracy, am-I-rite?

Also: Charles Bronson as the ground commander spent all of his time on the ground yammering into the radio. Which made my the war movie critic in my head happy; that's how it's really done.

“These military style weapons can bring down airplanes, they can bring down buildings, they can shoot people in mass with the pull of a trigger,” he said. “We must get these weapons off the street and out of our houses.”

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Come, my friends. 'T is not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars, until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down; It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew. Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho' We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are,-- One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

Friday, December 21, 2012

Gwendolyn read Fiona stories in bed for an hour while John perused the evening edition of the Times, then spread out some papers on the room's tiny desk. Later, they both changed into their evening clothes, primping quietly in twilight so as not to wake Fiona. At nine o'clock they stepped into the passageway, locked the door, and followed the sound of the big band to Æther's grand ballroom, where the dancing was just getting underway. The floor of the ballroom was a slab of translucent diamond. The lights were low. They seemed to float above the glittering moonlit surface of the Pacific as they did the waltz, minuet, Lindy, and electric slide into the night.

Every time I start to think 'Well, yes, the Republicans might now be the party of small government, fiscal restraint, and respect for the constitution' like it says on the wrapper a conservative, Republican 'not a fan of the regulatory state' guys pops out of the woodwork to remind me 'don't be fooled again'

Bring back the assault weapons ban, and bring it back with some teeth this time. Ban the manufacture, importation, sale, transfer and possession of both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Don't let people who already have them keep them. Don't let ones that have already been manufactured stay on the market. I don't care whether it's called gun control or a gun ban. I'm for it.

'logistical problems' Cheese and crackers: It's not the banality of evil, it's the banality of a wee little mind wrapping the Bill of Rights in a week-old newspaper and throwing it out the door for convenience sake.

Monday, December 17, 2012

The Importance of StoryIndividual and Cultural Effects of Skewing the Realities of American Involvement in Southeast Asia for Social, Political and/or Economic Ends.by: John M. Del Vecchio

In this paper, (pdf) I would like to establish a framework for the Importance of Story; then briefly examine how, and in what forms, Viet Nam has entered the American consciousness; where that story is skewed from verifiable reality; and why; and finally look at the ramifications of the distortions, gaps and omissions in ambient cultural story.

Worth the read. I wonder what Story is at work on the American consciousness now?

Friday, December 14, 2012

Chandra, a "recovering grammar snob" who works as an English teacher, has a smashing trio of essays on Literacy Privilege -- the invisible privilege that accrues to people who have the facility to write well and clearly, and who have absorbed the "correct" conventions of English. I know I've been guilty of dismissing people because of their grammar/spelling errors

Back that truck right the f*ck on up there, Cry Dctrw. Being able to run spell check is a privilege? Writing in a clear and concise manner is so hard you can't expect just anyone to pick it up?

Thursday, December 13, 2012

The Perfect Host with David Hyde Pierce: a little slice of awesome movie. Joe Bob sez 'Check it out'.

Joe Bob also sez 'don't watch the trailer' and 'don't look up spoilers'. The trailer sucks. You only need to know this;

It is part dark comedy, part thriller, part head drama. There is a bad guy. There is a fussy little man giving a dinner party.

There are twists, turns, 'what the' moments. They caught my wife by surprise, which these kinds of things do not usually do. Judging by that, these were executed very deftly.

You remember David Hyde Pierce from 'Frasier' as Niles Crane, where for a decade he played a dandy in a sitcom. A fop. You can't get away from Pierce as a fussy little man - he looks like a fussy little man. But he is not Niles in the movie. And it is very, very, good.

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

(AP) President Barack Obama says the U.S. now recognizes Syria's main opposition group as the "legitimate representative" of the country's people. The move paves the way for greater U.S. support as the group seeks the ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

There is an Ender's Game movie in the works. I cannot imagine how it could be faithful, or even good when scenes as described below are integral to the plot. A pre-teen brutally maiming his opponent, without heat, and with a great deal of careful consideration, should be too raw for the cinema, nu?.

Despite his desperate circumstances, Ender coolly reads Bonzo’s character and manipulates him into fighting one-on-one. Once the fight begins, Ender easily beats Bonzo to a pulp, without himself even getting scratched: when it comes to the test, Bonzo the formidable adversary is stupid and incompetent, or his rage makes him stupid and incompetent. Up until now Ender has shown himself to be vastly superior to Bonzo in mental combat; now he shows himself to be equally superior in physical combat. Yet even when it is clear that Ender has already won the fight, Ender persists in maiming Bonzo in order to insure there are no future attacks.

Monday, December 03, 2012

AWS has a free tier. Here, Amazon is saying, the bits are so cheap and stupid easy to setup we can afford to give you some of them.

We're having unseasonably warm weather.

I thought I knew Linux. I did! But it was a casual, superficial kind of thing - run a workstation, setup a server: big deal. I'm laying the groundwork for deploying hundreds of the things. Today I got into (duh duh duh) software repositories: reposync, createrepo, those mysterious .repo files.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

JEP writes:I suspect that “Mankind” will not show the crucial scene in the education of Alexander of Macedon (not yet The Great) who as a teenager was sent with one of Phillip’s marshals with a small force to deal with insurgents and raids on the frontier. On the way they encountered a stream of refugees, young people, women well raped, carrying everything they had as the fled toward the order represented by King Phillip. The old marshal pointed to the stream of misery and said “That is defeat. Avoid it.” Alexander remembered that all his life. It is a lesson every free person should learn.

What to do about dysfunctional universities that deliver no value for money spent? Forget 'em, writes William Briggs.The idea is sound. Ignore the old system, which hasn’t any hope of being repaired, and start again. Let those who wish pile up debt, collect “womyn’s studies” “degrees”, and be taught by adjuncts at Behemoth U. But for those students who actually want to learn, we have to do something different. Nothing radical. Just return to the roots of what a classical liberal education was meant to be.

NeoVictorian Computing.We software creators woke up one day to find ourselves living in the software factory. The floor is hard, from time to time it gets very cold at night, and they say the factory is going to close and move somewhere else. We are unhappy with our modern computing and alienated from our work, we experience constant, inexorable guilt.

Tuesday, November 06, 2012

Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how “power posing” -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don’t feel confident -- can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.

Sunday, November 04, 2012

Quigley's book also explains why the federal government of the United States of Europe & America in Philip K. Dick's novel The Simulacra is a one-party state — and why those who still believe at this late date that there is any significant difference between Republicans and Democrats is indulging him- or herself in childish fantasy. As Quigley put it,

The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies.

There aint no heat and the powers gone out, It's kerosene lamps and candles.The roads are blocked its all grid locked, you got a short wave handle?Can you track the deer, can you dig the well, couldn’t quite hear your answer.I think I see a rip in the social fabric, brother can you spare some ammo.

Saturday, November 03, 2012

(That bit about George's family being swept up into FDR's concentration camps? Some powerful stuff. It Can Happen Here. Again.)

George and Penn were gassing along like friends. George has a new play. Penn can't make it to opening night but he really wants to see it the next night. George is delighted. I had a thought: how do guys like this keep in touch?

Okay yes, they have people. Email. Instant Messaging. Sure.

But how do they keep the noise down?

Email. Brad Famous has an email: brad.famous@gmail.com He gets thousands of emails to it a day: fans, well-wishers, spammers, the sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, wastoids, dweebies, d*ckheads.

And Brad has people he actually wants to email: his wife, his kids, his buddy Penn, because he can't remember the punch line to the bear joke.

Everyone who is famous or rich or in the public spot-light has the same problem: how do you talk to people to get things done?

This kind of thing - a technical and social problem all wrapped up in a meaty package - is super-fascinating to me. Dogs have squirrels, I have thoughts like these.

I can imagine a close-held white listing service: out-of-band updates to your network, crypto. They'd shred their trash as a matter of course. It's could be a guy and his wife in Montana or Wisconsin, someplace out of the way. Like that.

Friday, November 02, 2012

Soon the programmer has no choice but to retreat into some private interior space, closer to the machine, where things can be accomplished. The machine begins to seem friendlier than the analysts, the users, the managers. The real-world reflection of the program — who cares anymore? Guide an X-ray machine or target a missile; print a budget or a dossier; run a city subway or a disk-drive read/write arm: it all begins to blur. The system has crossed the membrane — the great filter of logic, instruction by instruction — where it has been cleansed of its linkages to actual human life.

The goal now is not whatever all the analysts first set out to do; the goal becomes the creation of the system itself. Any ethics or morals or second thoughts, any questions or muddles or exceptions, all dissolve into a junky Nike-mind: Just do it. If I just sit here and code, you think, I can make something run. When the humans come back to talk changes, I can just run the program. Show them: Here. Look at this. See? This is not just talk. This runs. Whatever you might say, whatever the consequences, all you have are words and what I have is this, this thing I’ve built, this operational system. Talk all you want, but this thing here: it works.

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

We are born into a political status. We have no choice about the matter. We are … born under the dominion of politicians.… We can change our political status by emigrating from the subjection under which we are born to some other which we may think more desirable, but we cannot free ourselves from subjection to government altogether. In this respect we have somewhat less freedom today than even with regard to religion. We can avoid tithes, in many states, but none of us can avoid taxes. Public opinion has progressed to the point where it recognizes that abandonment of the church is not in itself an evil however sinful it may be from the standpoint of the clergy. But it has not yet arrived at a point where it recognizes that the abandonment of the state is equally free from evil.… But while we may have to consent to a political status and to contribute to the support of the government, we do not need to over-estimate the extent to which politicians and the political state contribute to our comfort. For government is, at best, a necessary evil. It does not become less evil because it seems necessary.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

The CIA is denying. The Pentagon is denying. And now the White House is denying that anyone refused to send help to our embattled CIA and State Department personnel engaged in a seven hour running firefight with more than 150 jihadists.

A company-sized team, with heavy weapons, surprise, initiative, and tons of time for proper planning (which prevents piss-poor performance) took seven hours to kill a handful of Americans, armed with, at best, small arms.

These are grown men, toting guns around their entire lives. This is the best they could do? That is embarrassing.

Any PFC out of SOI, who never saw a rifle before he hit MCRD, given 150 men, 12.5 machine guns, mortars, RPGs and 'artillery mounted on gun trucks' (whatever the f*ck that actually means) could flatten the place in an hour and home for a late dinner.

"Are these the Nazis, Walter?"

"No, Donny, these men are jihadists, there's nothing to be afraid of."

Monday, October 29, 2012

We don’t have to pay for freeways!Our schools are good enoughGive us endless warsOn foreign shoresAnd lots of Chinese stuffChildren singing the praises of the Leader is a feature of Communism, not a Republic. Catchy tune, however.

You may say, “But Fred, how can you be so bloody arrogant as to think you can run the country?” To which I reply, “We know that the incumbents cannot. I may be able to. In any event, I couldn’t be worse: I have not that talent. Which do you prefer, assured disaster or a sporting chance?”

Saturday, October 20, 2012

We've been talking about the value of a configuration engine replacing our rickety install process for years. Years. Hasn't been worth the short-term pain.

Looked at another way, have not been able to carve the time out to make it happen.

Looked at yet another way 'If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over'?

So this go-around we have a perfect storm of a project. I've managed to build in time to set up the infrastructure to setup the servers. An actual project plan that says 'build the configuration engine first, then build the servers using that'. It's important that this be done right, for a lot of tedious reaons.

It helps to be the guy who wrote the project plan.

Here is the deal: spend figuring out how to build a Puppet module to manage something on a server. An application. A service. User, file ... if it's something you can touch on a host there is a way to make Puppet do it. The more complicated the module, the more time it takes.

Edit crontab? Took about an hour. X Windows? Two hours. X is complicated.

The genius comes because forever after managing that resource on a server is a matter only of putting the host's name in the right file.

Want XWindows on a host? Edit the right file, save. Want it gone? REMOVE the entry from that file, wait an hour.

If one is feeling impetuous one can shell to the host and manually force the issue.

So I've got this Thinkpad, fred, running Slackware 14, but the keyboard is way over there, and it's not plugged into my monitors, getting those three monitors to work with the USB adapter and linux is going to be a pain and anyway it utterly lacks iTerm2, which is the cat's pajamas of terminal emulation.

Ah ...

$ xhost +fred$ ssh -X brian@fred# tmux# firefox &# emacs &

How 'bout that: X11 applications running on my Mac all nice and handy.

Theory: OS X is a superior platform for running 'linux' applications.

I am so lucky that I'm in a profession where I get to spend part of my workday dinking around with stuff like this.

Sunday, October 07, 2012

"The American people would rightly not tolerate this kind of concentration of power in government. Is it not fair and relevant to question its concentration in the hands of a tiny and closeted fraternity of privileged men, elected by no one and enjoying a monopoly sanctioned by government?"

A push at work is for work instruction software that produces lego-like diagrams for getting stuff done. You've seen them - pictures take you step-by-step through an assembly process. This is a great idea for a place like ours: our assembly guys can speak any of seven languages [1]. Lego instructions make a lot of sense. That kind of thing is getting everywhere, into everything.

Lego instructions for assembling complicated electronics, glyph-button cash registers at BurgerMcDonaldsKing, wizards for installing software .. what can you do? If you don't do this stuff you'll get run over by your competitors who do. Then you're out of business and working a cash register and forgetting how to make change because the machine tells you what to hand back to the customer ...

In your post-literate society there must be a corps of people who are literate. Someone writes the lego software, the install wizards, knows how to program the cash registers. Morlocks.

Morlocks get stuff done. They know how to fix things. They're happy people, busy and productive and well-compensated.

It's good to be a Morlock.

Except for having to live in an society that is in a Red Queen's Race to cater to Eloi. Ever had to wait in line while the kid behind the counter drives his register into a ditch, gets a puzzled look, has to have a manager come over and un-f*ck things?

Like that times a thousand.

Six if you count Scot as English. Which, listening to them, is real hard.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

"I have come to think, especially since my trip to Spain, that civil liberties must be protected at every stage. In Spain I am sure that the introduction of GPU methods by the Communists did as much harm as their tank men, pilots and experienced military men did good. The trouble with an all powerful secret police in the hands of fanatics, or of anybody, is that once it gets started there's no stopping it until it has corrupted the whole body politic. I am afraid that's what's happening in Russia."

Friday, September 21, 2012

I asked my wife 'how' she makes her meatloaf. She finally - finally - wrote it down for me.

Mix meat and other ingredients in large bowl until well blended. Put in as much seasoning as you think is good. I usually cook with the, "Yep, that looks about right," method. So, make sure to season it to your taste.

She is such an argument in favor of the 'opposites attract' theory of boy meet girl.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

vs

"There are 47% of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47% who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax…[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

The scouts around each fire nod their heads wisely and say 'mm hmm' and 'right on' and 'preach it brother-man'.

Instead of talking about who loves the common man more, or who is more right about such useless trivia, wouldn't it be a truly nifty thing if we'd take a break and focus on actually important matters like trampling the Constitution into dust, kill lists, illegal wars on countries far away and citizens at home, insane levels of spending?

F*ck that sh*t sideways and twice on Sunday. You can't do nation-building if you can't operate with the native troops and - it seems - we can't operate with the native troops without them getting all upset [1] because we do sh*t they don't like and they get all shooty at us.

Time to declare the job done and get the fuck out.

[1] On the other hand if horde of Afghanis invaded Wisconsin, installed Jim Doyle as Boss of Madison and insisted he was in charge of the rest of the state, and then had the gall to violate my cultural norms [2] to boot, I'd be tempted to take a potshot at them, too.

Just wanted to not for posterity how nifty it is, now. That one can do this kind of thing with a text processor makes me unreasonably happy.

Because tomorrow it is going to be part of my workflow and two minutes after that it is going to be just a thing and not worthy of mention. Oh, yeah, I'll say, that old thing [2].

Also: I'm just realizing the implication here: one can call a function in emacs externally. Sure, I read about it but seeing it ... this can be all kinds of cool.

[1] For the record, keeping my TODO in org-mode is the longest I've ever stuck with any given software or system for that purpose. We may have a winner.[2] Next up: exporting org-mode as html straight to the web server.

The idea that the government should provide everything suggests a great dimness of mind and poor grasp of the origin of specie. The belief apparently is that money comes from the government, as food comes from Safeway and cell phones from Radio Shack.

Are we going to see a shift in manufacturing towards the west? Are we going to see innovation in robotics and manufacturing? The landscape of automation is going to change. We are going to rely on software and cheaper hardware to get things done.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

I'd be curious as to how much of your distaste is just "I like Pepsi, but this is Coke" and how much is "feature X is just objectively bad".

About 90% the former, 10% the latter, 15% a dislike having to learn something new, 20% an intense dislike of ripping a perfectly fine, working, system up to replace it with something else.

Thinking it over it is (was) not so much 'Solaris' that I like but the combination of Solaris + hardware + support. One of their SEs once, in a completely above-and-beyond action, stayed on the phone with me during a tricky 3:00 a.m. call when I was a total zombie and needed such basic instructions like 'no, don't retype that entire line, yy-p and edit.' Sun support was the thing, man.

Linux Plus: things [1] just work without having to mentally translate 'linux-ism to 'solaris-ism'.

Linux Plus: the cool toys do work the way docs expect them to.

Linux Minus: the temptation to go wild and just install stuff is .. tempting. This might be a personal problem.

Startling: a how-to written 18 months ago is referred to without irony as ancient. In Solaris-land this same document would be venerable.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Opinions were solicited, recommendations provided, choices made. Like the good marine employee I am, I will ask questions, provide my opinion, [2] until the order is given and then it's 'Aye-aye Sir' about-face and carry out the plan of the day.

Good bye Solaris, hello Linux. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. [3]

But great furry cats, Linux is such ... such ... well it's not Solaris that's for sure.

But it's okay.

The only thing certain is change and useless whining.

[1] Because, duh, the clear winner is emacs.[2] Code for 'be a pain in the ass'.[3] We won't get fooled again .. YEEEAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Gawd damn The Who rocked, didn't they?

Saturday, August 18, 2012

1946. Athens, Tennessee. Surrounded by a paid company of thugs in the jail, Paul Cantrell, Pat Mansfield were counting ballots, stealing another election. Business as usual. Outside was Bill White with the militia ...

“Would you damn bastards bring those damn ballot boxes out here or we are going to set siege against the jail and blow it down!” Moments later the night exploded in automatic weapons fire punctuated by shotgun blasts.When it was over, Cantrell and Mansfield had fled, the militia kept order for a few days. The state came down, an honest ballot count happened, the reform candidates assumed office. Time passed.

There are no signs or monuments to commemorate the event; people have forgotten or do not wish to remember. But the graying manager of a local store, a friendly sort and so gentle with his grandchildren, squeezed off round after round at the jail that night. And the driver snoozing behind the wheel of his cab, not really caring whether he catches a fare or not, helped wrap and toss the deadly bundles of dynamite that sailed through the night air. You can bet they remember.

Friday, August 17, 2012

The 'Joe Biden is dumb as a box of hammers' meme is funny, but if you think he is actually that dumb you have another think coming.

He did get a BA, got a law degree, was alert enough to avoid the draft (five deferments), has been a US Senator since 1972. He's not walked into the side of a bus, has never shown up dripping wet with a dodgy story and a dead girl in a submerged car.

I'm not arguing he's got a big ol' brain on board, but what he has done argues that at the very least, under that goofball persona, is a guy with a certain low cunning.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

So this guy, Floyd Lee Corkins II, [1] ambles up to his ideological enemies, starts hollering, pulls a gun, wings a security guard. Who promptly disarms his dumb ass.

... the suspect said, "Don't shoot me, it was not about you, it was what this place stands for."

Amateur. Kids, if you're going to take a scary evil gun and slay people, observe the proper form: get foamy and ideological after the slaying.

Carrying on before the festivities betrays a lack of seriousness.

Bonus: this happened in D.C. which has more cops running around than you could shake a stick at. Super strict gun control laws. Floyd [2], he just walked right through them laws like they was printed on paper.[1] Middle name of 'Lee'. Now there is a warning sign if ever was one. Quite and unassuming, too. Another spot to cover on mass-murder buzz-word bingo.[2] Snicker.

Monday, August 13, 2012

Love the water parks. I like people in the abstract. In great bunches ... ew. Try real hard not to think about what is _in_ the water on the floor of the restroom and changing rooms. With thousands of monkeys trooping in and out it gets kind of gross in there.

Moms - stop yelling 'Don't run, you'll fall!' You really take a few hits in the ol' credibility department. If your spawn really thought they could fall they would not run. Try this: 'Don't run'. You are a parent - you don't need to justify yourself.

Since we live up north a lot of these water parks are inside. People from here take this for granted. Entering, I'm always taken aback for a minute, think about a John Varley Disney.

See, Varley is an SF writer, wrote a series of shorts and novels that take place in ... never mind. Upshot is that, in the future, people in the moon have carved caves, hundreds of kilometers in diameters, kilometers high, painted the ceiling blue, stocked them with flora and fauna. One refers to this kind of cave as a 'Disney'.[1]

So I stand there, take it in, think about how keen it would be to splash around in a wave pool in lunar gravity.

Hope they find a way to keep the restrooms clean.

[1] There is no problem with lawyers for Disney showing up and suing these folk into oblivion. Long before these stories are set aliens showed up and eradicated humanity on earth to save the whales.

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Rather, this building, at 1205 Manhattan Avenue, has been sliced and diced into several dozen small factories, each with a niche clientele.

No it gosh-darn has not been, Mr. Joseph Berger of the New York Times. There is not one single factory in that article.

But that's okay. He is just a reporter. Can't be expected to understand the meaning of words. Heck, he got impressed by a band saw and a guy with a welding rig and thought 'factory'.

Like if he met a guy with a few potted tomato plant on his balcony in Williamsburg. That's farming, man. He's ready to go plow a field. Write with authority on grain farming in the Dakotas.

Manufacturing is making lots of stuff, in a repeatable process. Computers. Cars. Tractors, routers, hammers. It is a really complicated process, getting the gozintas to assemble just right to make the gozouttas. It is surprisingly hard to do well.

Everything you see on the shelves at Wal-Mart is produced by an organization that has figured out how to be the best in their niche.

If they didn't figure it out, they're out of business. [1]

Marty Markowitz, the Brooklyn borough president, said Brooklyn “is going back to the future.”

“What is emerging is the artisanal approach rather than the mass production for millions of items of something,” he said.

What you got there in Brooklyn, with the band saw and the drill press and guys that make one-off photography models is craft. You're employing craftsmen to make really cool stuff, one at a time.

Names matter.[1] I could be crabby from gettin up before the rooster to fix a problem that was costing my company a few thousand dollars per minute in downtime. Then again just after the rooster crowed to fix another problem.

Tuesday, August 07, 2012

Science and science fiction have done a kind of dance over the last century, particularly with respect to Mars. The scientists make a finding. It inspires science fiction writers to write about it, and a host of young people read the science fiction and are excited, and inspired to become scientists to find out more about Mars, which they do, which then feeds again into another generation of science fiction and science; and that sequence has played major role in our present ability to get to Mars. It certainly was an important factor in the life of Robert Goddard, the American rocketry pioneer who, I think more than anyone else, paved the way for our actual ability to go to Mars. And it certainly played a role in my scientific development.

I don’t know why you’re on Mars. Maybe you’re there because we’ve recognized we have to carefully move small asteroids around to avert the possibility of one impacting the Earth with catastrophic consequences, and, while we’re up in near-Earth space, it’s only a hop, skip and a jump to Mars. Or, maybe we’re on Mars because we recognize that if there are human communities on many worlds, the chances of us being rendered extinct by some catastrophe on one world is much less. Or maybe we’re on Mars because of the magnificent science that can be done there - the gates of the wonder world are opening in our time. Maybe we’re on Mars because we have to be, because there’s a deep nomadic impulse built into us by the evolutionary process, we come after all, from hunter gatherers, and for 99.9% of our tenure on Earth we’ve been wanderers. And, the next place to wander to, is Mars. But whatever the reason you’re on Mars is, I’m glad you’re there. And I wish I was with you.

Sunday, July 29, 2012

Bullshit the first, just two pages after this graphic, elderly retired cop James Gordon uses his firearm ("Of course I still carry it") to break up a riot, enforce order, organize a bucket brigade to save a burning building. Without Batman or his army of testosterone-ripped thugs.

Gordon as a character has always stood for doing the right thing, even if it wasn't popular, or legal. Fundamentally, he's just a guy, counterpoint to the looney-tune Bruce Wayne, an everyman, with a sense of duty.

As Gordon monologues, drawing his gun: "They start listening."

Bullshit the second, we don't live in a comic book. Batman is fantasy, not an instruction manual.

Self-defense is the first human right. Firearms enable the weak, the helpless, the everyman to exercise that fundamental right.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Reading this and that on the internet today about the Aurora Massacre I realized with mild shock that I've been there. In that situation. I don't think about it much - it's just something that happened once.

Which is to say that I was once under arms without ammunition [1], a dozen feet from a guy who was trying real hard to kill people. He didn't [2] which is down to darkness and a whole lot of luck. [3]

But I gotta think than anyone who has actually been there, experienced it first hand, has thought about it, doesn't have a lot of truck with people who want victims to cower under a desk, for them to wait for the cops to show up, who feel that an armed citizen facing down a killer just makes it worse.

[1] Which is the stupid-silly kind of thing that happens in the military. That time it was poor communication, happenstance, and fum-duckery, not SOP.[2] F*cking boot.[3] The good guys trying to kill him back didn't succeed either. Lots of luck running around that night.

"But I also believe that a lot of gun owners would agree that AK-47s belong in the hands of soldiers, not in the hands of criminals -- that they belong on the battlefield of war, not on the streets of our cities."

This citizen believes an AK-47 belongs in the trunk of my car. One over the fireplace. Upstairs in my closet. F**k a lot of soldiers, why should they get to have all of the fun?

But never mind.

Some will call our Commander-in-Chief clueless about the very basics of the armed forces he has been elected to lead. Not I. Some will say he's a dimwit, a tool to his teleprompter, victim of a speechwriter without clue. A man who lacks curiosity about anything not in his cozy, narrow, cone of light.

Not me. [1]

I say that it proves is that he's never, ever, seen that classic Clint Eastwood movie 'Heartbreak Ridge'.

For if he had this line would be seared into his memory:

This is the AK-47 assault rifle, the preferred weapon of your enemy; and it makes a distinctive sound when fired at you, so remember it.

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Springsteen begins to mumble in what the music critic Jody Rosen calls his “flat Dust Bowl Okie accent,” and I can’t make out a word he’s saying. I ask Christie if he understands him.

“You want to know what he’s saying?,” Christie asks. “He’s telling us that rich people like him are fucking over poor people like us in the audience, except that us in the audience aren’t poor, because we can afford to pay 98 bucks to him to see his show. That’s what he’s saying.”

Wait a second, this is Bruce Springsteen we’re talking about, the guy you adore?

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Starship Troopers, Chapter 11, the protagonist is on leave from the war. He describes a strip of bars, pawn shops, dives, strip joints, tattoo parlors, and book stores outside the base.

Then Our Hero, Rico, narrates ..

If you are able to get past these traps, through having already been bled of all valuta, there are still other places in the city almost as satisfactory. I mean there are girls there, too. Which are provided free by a grateful populace. Much like the social center in Vancouver, these are, but even more welcome.

A brothel, by golly, run by the city. Take a number, soldier, the wait time is 20 minutes.

THE U.S. TAX SYSTEM IMPOSES AN ENORMOUS toll on productivity through high marginal rates, absurd complexity, loopholes for the well-connected, and incentives for wasteful decisions. A better, fairer system will be:

Abolish the Internal Revenue Service.

Enact the Fair Tax to tax expenditures, rather than income, with a 'prebate' to make spending on basic necessities tax free.

With the Fair Tax, eliminate business taxes, withholding and other levies that penalize productivity, while creating millions of jobs.

Suggested Reading: www.FairTax.org

No more IRS? An entire thugocracy turned out to honest labor? Getting rid of a friggin' wind anchor on the ship of state? Sign me up.

Tuesday, July 03, 2012

Not just a phoney-fake Marine but a phoney-fake Marine who got to jump out of airplanes. And not just a phoney-fake Marine who can parachute but one who got himself a Special Warfare insignia. And an EOD badge.

And not just a phoney-fake parachuting Marine/SEAL/EOD man but a phoney-fake parachuting Marine/SEAL/EOD man who can't arrange his shooting badges correctly or assemble his cover correctly.

Jesus Christ and Saint Peter in a sidecar.

You know - you just know - this guy is sitting at home after work. He has no friends. None, zero, zilch, nada.

It used to be that, for an organization, to experience this kind of disruption you needed your own data center. You had to pay out big bucks for servers, disk drives, electricity, staff.

Now all you gotta do is pay a lot of money to someone else. Progress!

Which isn't to say that I'm against the notion of 'cloud'. For some applications, it makes sense. For some organizations it's ideal.

But if you're gonna do it, you gotta recognize that you're outsourcing something real important, that the cloud provider is not nearly as interested in your data as you are.

And sometimes they're going to pull a fumducker and leave you hanging.

[1] I'm sure we're going to find out, in time, that it wasn't something simple like 'ran out of fuel for the generators' but a really-truly cascading error that jumped out of the fourth dimension to whack them hard. We've all been there.

Friday, June 22, 2012

... that I should be able to do, [1] but can't. Maybe I just don't know how.

What: Focus on an application window in Space1 [2]. Input a keystroke, send it to Space2.

Why: I have a window - an email, a pdf - it's in the wrong space. I need to refer to it while I doodle around in another virtual window. I don't want it here, I want it there. I want it there now, I don't want to wait while it makes a long trek left or right across three monitors to the next space.

Okay I could restack spaces so they are on top of each other, not side to side. Still: keystroke, bamspiceweasel, done.

Why: Terminal is where I work. Stuff happens in term. Twitter. The company phone book from a shell script. I edit text there. [4] The web browser, when I'm working, is a reference. It contains how-to guides. Tutorials. Knowledge base stuff from vendors.

The browser is a television. I want a remote control.

[1] Linux or OS X need only apply.[2]Wiki: Spaces (Software)[3] Do I really need to footnote this?[4] I play iTunes from terminal. It rocks.

There is a bit from Full Metal Jacket where a door gunner is murdering women, children, who were out in a paddy, working. He yells to Joker "If they run, they're VC. If they stand still, they're well disciplined VC. Ha!"

This is now national policy.

If this pleases you, if having a shadowy cabal do evil in your name makes you happy, then by all mean, please: vote this krep-head in for another four years in office.

On the other hand, if this kind of thing makes you sick to your stomach, if it bothers you in the slightest, then you have choices.

Speaking of Iraq .. Belmont: Friday Follies.The one sense in which these two videos are alike is that they depict a policy failure. Both record how immense organizations became sidetracked into pursuing in goals which had nothing to do with any rational objective.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Our new Drug Czar, Gil Kerlikowske: "Regardless of how you try to explain to people it's a 'war on drugs' or a 'war on a product,' people see a war as a war on them." Well golly however did we get that idea into our silly heads.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

An ominous regulatory announcement from the EPA came in 2007: “Starting with containers manufactured in 2009… it is expected that the new cans will be built with a simple and inexpensive permeation barrier and new spouts that close automatically.”

The government never said “no vents.” It abolished them de facto with new standards that every state had to adopt by 2009. So for the last three years, you have not been able to buy gas cans that work properly. They are not permitted to have a separate vent. The top has to close automatically. There are other silly things now, too, but the biggest problem is that they do not do well what cans are supposed to do.

The can on the left was bought last year. Had the other one for a few years. The new can has a complicated capspout with controls - a switch to lock back when you want to pour, a button to mash make the gas come out. Release the button and the (for lack of a better word) safety resets. It is annoying. It does not feel cheaply made, exactly, but I wonder how long it will last.

Some boating forums have suggested drilling a hole and putting a tire stem in there and using the screw top as the way to close the hole. Great idea. Just what I wanted to do with my Saturday afternoon, hacking the gas can to make it work exactly as well as it did three years ago, before government wrecked it.

Friday, May 04, 2012

Here Randy's got another hangup, something that's been slowly dawning on him as he stands on the beach beneath Tom Howard's concrete house: the perfect freedom that Tom's found in Kinakuta is a cut flower in a crystal vase. It's lovely, but it's dead, and the reason it's dead is that it has been alienated from its germinal soil. And what is that soil exactly? To a first approximation you could just say "America," but it's a little more complicated than that; America's just the hardest-to-ignore instantiation of a cultural and philosophical system that can be seen in a few other places. Not many. Certainly not in Kinakuta. The closest outpost is really not that far away: the Filipinos, for all of their shortcomings in the human rights department, have imbibed the whole Western freedom thing deeply, in a way that has arguably made them economic laggards compared to Asian countries where no one gives a shit about human rights.

A three-line function will call a 20-line Kermit script, process hundreds of customer names, thousands of files. Data flies into EDI which sends it to JDE which turns into orders, requests. Things get built, shipped. We make money.

Stuff happens.

"Meaningful Work or Death. Any other form of existence doesn’t interest me."